Modification of the Laboratory Oil Condition Test Rig and Wireless Data Acquisition System to Accommodate a Schroeder TWS-C Water Sensor

Over the past several years, DRDC Atlantic has embarked on a program for the evaluation of existing technologies, as well as the development of new technologies for application in platform specific health monitoring systems. It has been envisioned that dedicated sensor, hardware, and software suites may be employed to provide engineering officers with real time monitoring with respect to the performance of critical ships’ systems. Identified general applications for dedicated monitoring systems include detecting the ingress of water in highpressure hydraulic systems, assessing the rheological properties of main machinery lubricants, conducting rotating machinery vibration analysis, and measuring structural strain. The current study is focused primarily on detecting the ingress of water in high-pressure hydraulic systems. Specifically, two additional prototype sensors have been integrated into the DRDC oil condition monitoring test apparatus, a prototype water detection sensor (TestMate TWS-CTM), and an oil viscosity sensor (Biode eCupTM). A major upgrade has been conducted with respect to the hardware/software suite utilized for the acquisition and control of the DRDC laboratory oil condition monitoring test apparatus to accommodate the additional sensors. The upgrade includes the design and fabrication of a custom signal conditioning board capable of supporting up to sixteen input signals from the condition monitoring sensors. Ten of the sixteen modul